Stilleben

October 2, 2013

copyright Nick Brandt 2013!

Tanzania’s Lake Natron sure isn’t a friendly place. With its high soda and salt content, its caustic waters kills whatever organisms that enter it and slowly calcify their bodies, perfectly preserving them as they dry. It is a poisonously concentrated remnant of a 5,000 to 6,000 old fresh water lake that literally turns life into stone.

UK-born photographer Nick Brandt collected various washed-up animals by the lake and perched them in pre-death poses for his photo/essay book Across the Ravaged Land. A total of 120 pages, with 52 Quadtone plates, it was released by Abrams Books and has already received great criticism for its haunting, breathtaking imagery.

Find it on Amazonhere, visit his official website here and read up on the lake here. Art prints are available from select galleries in the U.S..

UPDATE: Just to be clear, the book is not a 120 page collection of dead animals photographed by the lake. Using the publisher’s own words “The book offers a darker vision of this world, still filled with a stunning beauty but now tragically tainted and fast disappearing at the hands of man”, with parts of it containing the Lake Natron photographs.